Summer Series: Eps 194, Genevieve Simperingham on Peaceful Parenting and Teens

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:04
Welcome to the joyful courage podcast Summer Series. This summer, we are going to revisit some of my favorite shows about parenting, tweens and tweens, tweens and tweens, tweens and teens. Yes, this podcast is an invitation to get real about parenting and to take personal responsibility for how you're showing up for your kids. This is a place of support, celebration and authenticity. I am so happy that you're here. There are nearly 200 shows to binge on my friends, so if the tween and teen years aren't your jam yet, check out some of my other past shows. This week, I am sharing a conversation with Genevieve simperingham. We talk about what peaceful parenting our teenagers can look like. What I love most about this conversation is the invitation to come from the place of considering that our teenagers might be more capable and thoughtful than we give them credit for. It was a timely revisit for me, and I'm guessing that it will be for many of you, too. If you love the conversation, don't forget, there's so many more to check out. And I would love for you to head over to iTunes and leave a review. Reviews allow for other people to find the podcast, enjoy the conversation, and ultimately change the experience they're having with parenting. So please, if you have the time and the inclination, head on over to iTunes and leave that review. Yay. Now enjoy the listening.

Hey, listeners. I am really excited about today's show. I have Genevieve simperingham On the show today. Genevieve is a counselor, an aware parenting instructor, an educator, a writer, an international speaker, a group facilitator. She teaches meditation and is the founder of the peaceful parent Institute in New Zealand. Over the last 24 years, Genevieve has presented hundreds of workshops and courses. She and her husband have parented their two children, who are now 20 and 15 with attachment principles from the beginning, Genevieve is committed to empowering parents with the tools that result in increased harmony, trust and cooperation in the family unit. I was just saying off air to Genevieve. I found her through her Facebook group, which is called the way of the peaceful parent, years ago. And I'm so so honored to say, welcome to the podcast, Genevieve,

Genevieve Simperingham 2:39
thank you, Casey. It is so good to be on air, and we've had, you know, some exciting little interchange through Facebook. And so I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Thank you. Oh man, me too. Me

Casey O'Roarty 2:53
too. Please share with the listeners a little bit more about you and what you do. Yeah,

Genevieve Simperingham 2:57
sure, sure. So I'm in New Zealand. I'm Irish, that's the accent, but been living here for about 18 years now, and so yeah, so I run the peaceful parent Institute, so I run a lot of workshops and seminars, and also do professional development with early childhood teachers, which I find really exciting. As you can imagine, Casey, it's so good to be bringing these concepts in to communities of very, very young, preschool aged children, and the teachers tend to just absolutely lap it up. And they just need more strategies, and they love these strategies that are more relationship based, and the same with the parents that I work with. So, yeah, I work with a lot of parents and teachers in different capacities, and I do a lot of one on one, work counseling and parent coaching. I've gone membership site and run e courses and forums and through that and yeah, just helping parents in all different capacities with all you name it. I've heard it all the different problems. I have heard it, yeah. And all of you know, I wish I could kind of connect more the parenting of the teenage issues, the parents who are parenting the teens with the younger ones. Because invariably, the parents of the teenagers say, I wish I had done all of this from the beginning, and I had done it properly, because then I wouldn't be dealing with as much as what I'm dealing with now, right? Yeah. So this is, this is me, and it's not just me, as Tabitha, who works for me, I just would be so lost without her these days. She's amazing and amazing group of peaceful parenting mentors and the men's and yeah, so we do good stuff, chipping away. Sometimes Casey, it feels like just a drop in the ocean, and other times it feels like, yeah, we're making a difference in the world. And that's what really lights me up. That's where my passion is. And I won't go into my history. It's a huge history. I've got, you know, lots of different. Meanings behind me, and also just a huge amount of experience from my own personal healing from a childhood of actually pretty extreme trauma and violence and, you know, sexual violence and neglect, which, you know, it's not that i i I can't say I'm glad I had the child that I have, but I can definitely say that in having the difficulties that I had in my, you know, early years of life, I have certainly made the most of transforming my self and my my trauma and then using that knowledge and that information and those skills to bring to people I work with, because most people, they're dealing with trauma to one extent or another. It may not be the extreme, and actually there's a lot of the extreme stuff. So, you know, I bring together that information of of healing trauma and counseling skills, but also mindfulness and meditation is a really big part of me, who I am, my that I've been meditating for 30 years, and I like to share some of that with the parents and the individuals and the groups that I work with. So yeah, and of course, my children, I know it's a cliche to say they're my biggest teachers, but they really are, and they have been, and it's amazing. It's sometimes I feel a bit guilty because it's a little bit like this social experiment. I ask questions sometimes, you know, to get the Insider. How is it from the perspective of somebody who has grown up with, you know, with that level of connection and listening and attunement from the beginning, it's amazing, because there's not a lot of them around. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 6:53
well, I recently told my daughter, I thanked her. I said, you know, I just want to thank you for some of the choices and decisions that you've been making lately because I'm getting approached by clients who are having a hard time with their teenagers, and now I get to speak from experience, yes, yes, yes. And that actually is really powerful. You know, I had one gal say, if you didn't have a teen daughter, I would not have hired you. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. You know, there is something to be said for the experience of being in it while also supporting others.

Genevieve Simperingham 7:24
Yeah, and I used to get that a lot when, when my children were still, you know, in those younger years, and I was running lots of parenting seminars, and invariably, there'd be somebody who'd say, so, how old are you kids? So your oldest is nine, so you haven't hit the teenage years yet, have you? And there'd be this knowing lock up, yeah. Well, let's see how you navigate that, you know. So it's really good to be able to say My oldest is about to turn 21 you know. And so it's not that, of course, that I have personal experience of of every challenge, but whatever age your child is at you kind of enter that world, don't you, because it's not just your children, but it's all of their friends and their parents. You enter the world of five year olds, the world of eight year olds, the world of 16 year olds. I'm about to enter, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 8:15
yeah. Well, I just so appreciate just all of it, the whole tapestry of who you are and what you bring to your work. And I really appreciate the way that you have and I, you know, I think this is something that I tried to support parents with, as well as really looking at, instead of being stuck in the, you know, my models my childhood, this was everything that was wrong with it, really recognizing that because of whatever showed up in our childhood, we get to make we get to have a certain flavor of awareness. We get to have, you know, different opportunities of recognizing who we want to be in the world and how we want to take that and learn and grow from it. Okay, so thank you for that, yeah,

Genevieve Simperingham 9:04
thank you for that acknowledgement it gives, yeah, it really does give you such depths of empathy and understanding. For those you know, the darker territories of whatever it is, whatever the challenges that you face, it gives you the gift, really, of being able to connect with other people who are having similar challenges or who have experienced similar challenges. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 9:28
And listeners, I'm not sure you've caught on yet, but the territory that we're going to be exploring on today's show is that of peaceful parenting. Are teenagers, right? So like you said, I've run classes where there's parents of really young kids, and then there's parents of maybe middle school aged kids, and the parents of the middle school aged kids are looking longingly at the parents of the young kids, thinking, Where would I be right now, had I started this work earlier? While the parents of the little little kids are looking at the parents of the older kids, thinking, I. I can't wait till my kids are old enough to articulate what they need to me, and we can run family meetings and do some of the things that feel out of reach when they're really young. But let's just start first. So we are going to focus on teens, but let's start first with when you talk about peaceful parenting, Genevieve, can you define what it means to you and how it is different from some of the more mainstream behaviorist parenting approaches. Yeah,

Genevieve Simperingham 10:28
sure, and I'll try to be brief, because obviously that's a big subject, but I I love how you said that you really resonated with the way of the peaceful parent, that title and that you read the book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which I really love. And so I really I defined peaceful parenting before I realized that there was anybody else who had even kind of used that and and, but there was, there was Dr mama, who had the Facebook page already at that stage. And so I was already running parenting courses. And I have to say, a huge influence for me is aware parenting and the work of Dr Alita sauter, and I am, you know, a level two aware parenting instructor. So I really have to always give Elisa credit that she's been one of my big teachers, and I've learned a lot from her and from her books and and yet I can't. I had to. I had to create my own branding and different definition, because there's so many other influences that play a big, big part in my work as well. And so also, in fairness to Aletha that I didn't want to misrepresent her work, and so I developed the peaceful parenting brand. And that company, I changed my company name about 12 years ago to because I had been running a lot of different courses in lots of different subjects, and then I decided to really specialize in parenting, because I've been doing this work for about 25 years or so, but about 12 years ago, I specialized in the parenting and developed the peaceful parenting brand, and it was my husband. One day, we were having a conversation about my business, and he was saying, he said, Jen, yours is the way of the peaceful parent. He just said it like that. And I went, Oh my gosh, you know, was one of those epiphany moments. I'm like, That's it. That's it. You've just, you've just nailed it. You've just absolutely nailed it. And because we both knew exactly what he was talking about, and you've read the book, and there'll be listeners who haven't, but really it's, it's about, it's about bringing into your parenting, not just how we should respond in this situation, that situation, and our different approaches and techniques, which are really, really important, but it's all about who we are as a person, and so our child is as a person, and the dynamic and the energy between us and so peaceful parenting, to me, it's it becomes a lifestyle for people when they really tap into it, and they and they start to look at parenting in a different way, and they start with the techniques, and they start using active listening, and they start using more requests instead of demands. They'll start to do more problem solving, rather than always imposing the solutions on the kids, so as they're helping the children develop their own critical thinking and problem solving skills, and they'll start by using more I statements rather than blaming language and you mentioned family meetings, and they'll start to practice things like that. And bring into bring into limit setting the love and the connection, but parents soon find that it's not enough that they can't just switch into using more respectful communication, because they still have a lot of impatience and judgments and resentments inside of them that they project onto their children. So then they start to peel it backwards. And this is what I'm supporting parents to do, is to look at what's happening inside of you when you make a request of your child and they you know, they're defiant, and they talk back to you, what happens in you? What does it trigger in you. What does it bring up? And that brings the parents into the whole world of looking at at their their own heart, really, and their childhood patterns. And I developed a model called center, connect, communicate, and the sense centering is all about. Out, how can we as parents be more patient and more genuinely kind, genuinely caring, genuinely empathetic, not just pretending to be empathetic to try and get the compliance, but actually genuinely caring in the way that her child feels it. How can we do that? And to do that, we need to get centered, and to get centered and to be less angry and to be more patient, we need to decrease our stress. So now we move into the whole world of stress management, stress reduction, self care and healing trauma and changing patterns and changing systems. And of course, this is all my counseling, work and training that all comes in here. And so I teach parents a lot of this stuff. And so the center connect, communicate model really is about putting the center centering to get centered, which basically just means to connect inside yourself in the way that you're self aware, you're mindful, and you're truly present. You know what's going on inside of yourself, and you've got a way of managing that, to change your state from from impatience back to patience and and then the Connecting is about connecting with our children in ways that they that they really feel connected to and like, what makes you feel connected with friends or me? Casey, it's similar to our kids. You know, when somebody really, really, really listens to us and somebody laughs with us, and, you know, shares our interests and really, really listens and really gives us their time, then we feel connected, and we can't just use the problem solving and the I statements and the requests and the loving limits if we're not putting enough time into really playing with our children and for you and me with our teenagers, it's really showing an interest in their world and having laughs with them and playing card games and being silly and going on walks or doing adventures and listening and, you know, time connection and affection and eye contact. So center, connect, communicate, as a model I developed to to put the centering and the connecting right in front before the communication. So as it's not just a nice idea or something that you kind of add in extra, but this actually forms the foundation of the relation relationship, because if we can't get centered and manage your own stress, and if we're not prioritizing the time to really connect with our child, then the family meetings, the I statements, the problem solving, whatever communication techniques you use, they're not going to work. We're not going to have the influence. And this is as very true with the teenagers, maybe even more. So it's true at every age. So I hope that was coherence and often made sense. So, oh yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 18:16
Well, what I love Genevieve is, and this is something that's so fun, right? I have this venue, I have this podcast, and then I find myself having access to people like you and others who are doing their work in their part of the world and making a difference. And there is this beautiful thread, really, that is woven through all of this great work, which is what you're just speaking into like we have to do our own inner work. Yeah, right. And like you said at the top, are, you know, it sounds cliche, but our children, our teachers, I think our kids pick us to show us where our gaps in learning are, so that we then get to, you know, celebrate the fact that there's more growth and development to be done on our end. And and I love to say that the most powerful tool that we have for influencing behavior is our relationship with our kids. And, yeah, you can't ask curiosity questions and have it be helpful if you're not actually curious. Yeah, empathy is not empathy. If you're not feeling empathy Exactly. So like, yeah. And so I love bringing people on and hearing the different language that's used. So I like to say, you know, bring, how do we bring empathy to life in our body? How do we embody empathy? How do we embody curiosity? So it's just I'm over here, holding back, going Yes, yes, yes. Loving everything that you're talking about, loving that can center and connect, comes before communicate, just beautiful and then so moving us into the conversation around teenagers. And remember listeners you might not have a teenager.

Unknown Speaker 19:59
Yeah. Okay,

Casey O'Roarty 20:01
so I'm going to give you a little bit of context. Well, I'm going to give everybody some context around how this conversation came to be that we're having right now, which is, I love to crowdsource. I love to hear what the people think about things. And so last fall, right? Last fall, I wanted to get a feel for how, what was the popular opinion around boys hanging out in the girls room, in the teenagers room, right? And you saw the response

Genevieve Simperingham 20:31
I did. You saw

Casey O'Roarty 20:31
it was crazy. Oh my gosh. I don't think I've ever, I've never posted anything that. And it was on my personal page that got that. I mean, it was on fire, I believe. And initially, you know, it was those straight from the hip. Hell no. What do you want to be a grandparent? Mind you, I never said anything about, like, should I let them have sex in her room? I just simply said, What's your policy? And everybody immediately went to, yeah, yeah, sucks, right? And so, and then slowly, my parent educator friends showed up and and other friends and saying, like, well, you know, I think that it's more. There's more to this than just do you don't Yeah, and and then you reached out to me via Messenger, and we had a great conversation about that. So, okay, so this is just one example. It could have been any, you know, all of the risky behavior we think about when we think about teens. But why is it that it's so hard, or it appears to be so hard to be this? Like, what is the hang up around being a peaceful parent and our teenagers, what do you find is the biggest hang up for parents when you're trying to support them in navigating the teen years? Well,

Genevieve Simperingham 21:51
I think this is true at every age, in different ways, but particularly with the teenagers, there are a lot of old, archaic, unhelpful belief systems that the parents need to challenge. I think there's a lot of prejudice towards teenagers. I think generally, teenagers are seen to be, you know, just potential troublemakers, and we're watching you guys. We know what you guys get up. Here's an example. Okay, so just yesterday, I collected my daughter from the airport after three weeks in Vietnam. And my daughter, she's 15, and she had this amazing opportunity to go to Vietnam for three weeks with this group of school kids. So the 12 girls are all around the same sort of age. And I know most some of these girls, or at least know them to see. But anyway, my daughter knows well, and they had had three weeks together with the teachers and the guide, and they had this amazing time. And it just so happened that the group that my, my girl was with was similar to her in that they're actually, they're not interested in in drinking alcohol. And I know that that's not the same. In fact, she does go to parties where, where her friends do drink alcohol. But, you know, this had been a trip where they were so so focused on their experience, whether it was they did a community project and they did an amazing Trek and they did a cooking class, and so they were so absorbed in their experience. And really the furthest thing from their minds was finding a way of getting drunk or having, you know, finding a guy that could have sex with Dan and alleyway or whatever, you know, just right? It wasn't really on their agenda, you know. And I'm not saying that for some kids, that wouldn't be but then they stopped in the they had a five hour stop over in Hong Kong Airport, and the girls said they wanted to go and lock around the shops. And the teacher said, okay, but girls, no alcohol, no smoking cigarettes. Don't you know, I gave them this list of things that they shouldn't do, and this was after three weeks of, I guess, talking about the ground rules all the time. And Aisha said, My daughter said she was so disappointed, and that all of her friends were so disappointed, because, as I said to her, it was as if the teacher hadn't got to know them, you know, that here they were, you know, just projecting the worse onto them. They were just thinking about its new airport, how exciting we're going to lock around the shops and maybe go and get some food and and they're being given the warning, okay, don't get drunk, don't have sex. Yeah. So you asked me, What are the biggest blocks? You know that that example, and I'm not bagging that teacher, I'm hugely great. Grateful to her. You know, she she knocked after our girls for three weeks and and bless her for that, and she wouldn't have seen anything wrong with what she was saying. But I'm Hope, hopefully, I'm demonstrating how, how just kind of, how unnecessary that is, how redundant it is. It's not helpful. If she did have reason to to be concerned about one of those girls, for whatever reason that she had picked up that that girl, actually, she did catch her trying to drink some alcohol or whatever, then the thing to do would be to have a little one on one and say, you know, hey, I noticed that you wanted to drink, and do you sometimes drink? And let's have a chat about it. You know, a heart to heart, person to person, human to human conversation with where the teacher is centered, and connect, connecting like in a real human to human way. That's what's needed. But, but those cliches of, hey, you're teenagers. I know what you teenagers do? You get into risky behavior, and they're just old, archaic projections that get projected onto teenagers all the time, and they really get in the way of relationships like the adults should be relating with these kids getting to know them, rather than just putting them in the cliche box.

Casey O'Roarty 26:29
Hey, hi. Interrupting here to remind you that there are many ways to stay connected to joyful courage, I host two free groups on Facebook. One is the live and love with joyful courage group, and the other is the joyful courage parents of teens group. These are both places for you to come and be in community with other parents on the path of being intentional and thoughtful while raising children. You can also follow me on Instagram at at joyful underscore, courage. This is where I hang out and offer regular giveaways and host challenges like the current 10 day reset challenge. Be sure to get on my mailing list to stay up to date on all of my offers and new shows that are released. It's the best way to stay connected. You can join the newsletter list by going to www dot joyful courage.com/join. Yay. I hope that you stay connected, because I really like to be connected to all of you. So just do it. Oh man. And even as I'm sitting here again, nodding my head, I'm also simultaneously thinking, oh gosh, I do that. I do it, I do it. I say, don't do anything. Don't do anything stupid or, you know, and sometimes it's kind of light jokey, but I do that, and I think that it's this, it's this, you're right, this archaic belief system. It's my own really awesome choices as a teenager and and like really being called like I've never been before, or even never really understood what it meant to be called into trust at the level that is being called for right now. So how do we help ourselves anchor in to trust and really explore what trust means, because teens are teens make mistakes and they do dumb things. That's how their brains are wired for, you know, poor risk assessment. Yeah,

Speaker 1 28:34
so trust, you know, and maybe it's

Casey O'Roarty 28:39
defining like or redefining, because it's not like I trust that you will never make a mistake, because that would be we'll be set up for disappointment. So what is, let's talk a little bit

Genevieve Simperingham 28:49
about that, and that will be putting unrealistic expectations on them, because some parents do that. Some parents say, I know you would never drink, and I know you wouldn't want to have sex with a boy, and I know that you were a good kid and and of course, that's not realistic and not helpful either. And that's basically saying, you know, I'm putting you in that box, and I expect you to stay in that box. And there was, there was a party that my daughter was going to go to, and the invite was a sweet 16 birthday party, and the invite said, byo, alcohol, right? Okay, it's the gates. I've been through this with my son, you know, reaching that stage of, you know, where there are parties where they're drinking and kids are drinking and and rather than I could have said to her, I don't think you would want to drink, but if I said that to her and she was thinking of drinking, then it creates a disconnect from the beginning. So I purposely framed my question more openly than that, and I said, what about you do? I. You know, what do you think about drinking? And have you thought about trying alcohol? And you know, what are your thoughts and feelings about? So can you hear the difference? So the difference is that I set it up in the way that if you are thinking about that, or if you have been thinking about or if you have done it, then let's talk about it with that nice the centering and the connecting and nice calm tone the voice. And so I think a lot of it surround reframing and like when you Oh, Casey knows, don't do anything stupid. And so I'll use that as an example, of course, you know. And it's these kind of cliches that we can come out with, because it's what was said to us, and that's what other parents say. And this is what I mean about we just, you know, it's just examining it and these beliefs. And we sort of do that one at a time. We can't do all of them. It's sort of when we say something then, and our child gives us that lock. They go, hang on. Oh, yeah, actually, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 31:00
let's think about things well. And it's so like, it feels like the, you know, like the stakes are so high,

Genevieve Simperingham 31:08
there's, oh my gosh, they're so high. And I, you know, I've worked with clients. I've got clients at the moment and in the past, and, ah, big stuff. Yeah, yeah. Suicide rate in New Zealand is, is one of the highest in the world, actually, and yeah, and so suicide attempts and overdoses, and yeah, a lot of the stakes are so high. And I use exactly those words often when I'm talked about to appearance of the younger kids as say, I say to them, you know, when it gets to teenage years, the stakes are so high. And so, you know, they need to get a lot so beginning, so we need to, and,

Casey O'Roarty 31:49
yeah, yeah, yeah. And even when, you know, and this was really helpful to me, as I was like, Oh my God, what's going on. A couple months ago, I took out my, I'm a positive discipline trainer, so I took out my positive discipline for teenagers books, and one of the sections was, and listeners, you may have heard me say this before, one of the sections was, will kids who are raised with positive discipline rebel? And the response was something like, you know, positive discipline does not change brain development, you know. And the difference with kids who have been raised with positive discipline often is, instead of going underground or waiting till they're out of the house, they tend to, you know, do their rebelling right in front of us and tell us all about it. And so you know what I heard you say with your language tweak with your daughter around the party, and the alcohol use is you sending the message of, I'm available. I can handle having these conversations with you. And I think that that's really powerful when I think about my own mistakes, when or my own risky behavior. Never in my mind Did it occur to me that I could talk to my parents about the things I was curious about? Yeah, that's all or that I could have, yeah? I mean, it was, yeah, no way. And so, so I'm wondering now, okay, so the conversation goes on, and the response is, yeah, I'm kind of, I kind of want to check this out. I want to try this open lines

Genevieve Simperingham 33:17
of communication all the way is really right, yeah, but then,

Casey O'Roarty 33:21
and then we're like, standing there, oh, thank you for being honest. Thank you for sharing with me. And you know, there's this like, piece of that, it's like this, and I'm moving my body back. It's like a tightrope, right? It's like, yep, that balance of, I'm here for you. I'm available. I want you to talk to me. And I also don't want to say, yeah, do whatever you want.

Genevieve Simperingham 33:47
No, no, check. You know, Casey is amazed me, actually. And we want to talk about the bedroom and the bedroom and the sex stuff, because just so much to talk about. But the alcohol one is a huge one, and it amazed me when I when my son reached that age of about 14, 1415, and now, you know, I've just seen it so much, and also on Facebook threads on my own, yeah, about alcohol that The vast majority of parents believe that it's better to let the kids drink alcohol at home from actually seems to be from about 14. When they get to 15, most parents are buying alcohol for their teenagers and and with the belief, and it seems to be a really strong belief in our society that we want to we want to help them get used to drinking alcohol in moderation, at home, under our roof and and so sometimes, you know, when parents says that to me and I say and so do you also let them smoke marijuana and. Take some other drugs in moderation at home, so if they can kind of get used to it in a safe environment. And, you know, that sounds kind of ridiculous, doesn't it, yeah, doesn't it? Okay? Well,

Casey O'Roarty 35:11
I live in Washington State, where it's where it's weed is legal. So you know what? That is not very far fetched to just go. I mean, the other stuff, yes, but marijuana, I'm guessing, is kind of starting to be that same kind of thing as alcohol, where it's like, well, if you do it with me, you know.

Genevieve Simperingham 35:30
But I think the thing the difference is that those parents who are letting their letting their kids smoke marijuana at home, and most, you know, a lot of kids do start smoking at home, and it's really, it's about, usually, it's about roping the kids into that culture because they don't want the kids to disapprove of them, and they don't want to their kids to be bagging them about it. But the parents who are letting their kids smoke marijuana at home don't tend to brag about it, don't talk, tend to talk about as if it's a really good thing. But most parents do talk about how they let their kids smoke or drink alcohol at home in moderation. I you know, they really, really, just genuinely believe that they are doing the best thing for their kids. And you're probably picking up the I don't, you know, I don't advocate that. That's not the way of the peaceful parents. No, no, it's not, you know, I often say I teach people how to set limits and how to hold limits, and how to how to maintain the relationship and the connection while holding limits. And I don't like to get too much into what those limits should be, because it is very, very individual to each family and to each child and you know, and so I try and stay out of that territory.

But I think in this conversation about the alcohol at home, I'm going to just sort of stick my neck out and say how I feel about it, because I want parents to really question, really question that belief that or, you know, it's a good thing that I'm letting my kids drink alcohol at home, because There is actually a lot of research that shows that, you know, the negative effects of alcohol on the developing brain, and I don't think most of those parents are aware of that, and their kids certainly aren't aware of it. And the first time that my son was going to be drinking alcohol, it was a school ball and and he bought alcohol with his friends, you know, they bought a that. And I can't, I think he was, I think he was 17, and which, yeah, and he was going to be drinking. And I said to him, you know, honey, I it. I know it is your choice, and I can't make you not drink, and I certainly don't want to make you feel, you know, judged by me, because I love you and look after you no matter what. And but I do, I do want you to learn a little bit more about the effects of alcohol on the brain, so as you know why and why, I wouldn't recommend it. And so as you can just bring that information in, and I said to him, so okay, you say you're going to drink, and you're probably going to drink, whether I agree with it or not. And but will you watch three clips and three video clips and the high finds, and I'll try and find the ones that are the most efficient, rather than, like a whole hour long documentary with heaps of science that's going to bore it silly, you know? Yeah, sure. And so that's what I did. And so I found some video clips that had some graphics and described what it does to the brain and how it affects the brain, and some of the research that shows that, you know that drinking alcohol in those early years affects particularly memory retention. And you know he's he, I can't say that he, you know, he wasn't a teenager who didn't drink at all, but we threw a really big party for his 18th and he was drinking at that 18th party, but at the end of the evening, he was like, just fully there with cleaning up and taking down the marquee and, you know, organizing the kids who didn't seem to have a lift, or the ones who had got really drunk or who had vomited out on the grass or whatever. And, you know, he, it's not that he, I think he did get drunk, but he didn't get to that point of being silly. You know, he's 21 now, and he, yeah, he does drink, but he definitely drinks in moderation. And so that's that, you know, I'm happy with the with the fact. That he is continuing to do self care. And the first time that he did drink, when I picked him up, Casey, I said to him, okay, you know, you've had a couple of drinks here. Have this big glass of water with lots of vitamin C, and because this is going to help your body cleanse and detox and and then the next morning, talking about, you know, have fruit for breakfast, maybe to start with, because that's really cleansing. And so instead of just giving him heaps of lecturing, I'm already helping him to know how he can bring his body back to health and balance, you know. So it's just a different approach.

Casey O'Roarty 40:38
It's such a different approach, and I love it, and I love I'm so glad thank you for all the detail. I really appreciated hearing you say, you know, ultimately I can't control you, and you're gonna make your choices. And I know that my daughter has appreciated me saying that, acknowledging that, yeah, and that's no small thing, because I like to control things. Yeah, same. So I'm

Genevieve Simperingham 41:05
a self confessed control freak. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 41:09
that's for sure. And I and, and I appreciate too, you know, I think it's such a different road when the parent like, we can be not a fan of their choices while still standing by them and helping them navigate through, yeah, you know. And I think that, you know, even when they're little and we talk about, well, how you respond is definitely going to influence outcome. You know, that carries on and is true. How we respond. You know, you responding with, Hey, listen, this is how you can take you've had a couple drinks. This is how you can take care of yourself and not assume that. I think there's this whole idea of, well, if you don't do something to him, he's gonna know that he can, quote, get away with that, and so it's only going to get worse, yeah, whereas even when it is like, Okay, I'm gonna do something and we punish and we here's the consequences. How many teenagers then say, Wow, I'm not gonna do that again, because I got in big trouble. Yeah? No, I mean, I guess there's probably some in the short term. Who knows? But no, but ultimately, it just means I can't trust my parent, and I've got to get better at being sneaky and pulling this off exactly. And then it ups that, that whole excitement factor around the behavior, yeah, which is, you know, triggers the brain, and, oh my gosh, yeah,

Genevieve Simperingham 42:42
exactly, yeah, exactly. Hey, there was, there's this parent educator and author, Thomas Gordon. Are you familiar with the work of Thomas Gordon? He wrote parent effectiveness training and teacher effectiveness training, and he started these parenting programs back in the 80s, I think, and amazing, amazing, amazing stuff. And it's still Ron throughout, right? I

Casey O'Roarty 43:08
think I've had guests. I think Larissa Dunn came on our Larissa dance. I've had guests who are pet, pet, right? Yeah,

Genevieve Simperingham 43:17
that's it. That's it. And, you know, just as I credit alitha Soldier, I've never met, Thomas Gordon, but I have to credit him that his work has definitely had a huge influence on me and my work. Something really interesting in the beginning of parent effectiveness training is that he said that he didn't anticipate this himself, but when he started running the parenting programs that he learned through the families doing, doing the work and using those techniques that they largely escaped the teenage rebellion. And Elisa thought, or she says the same, you know, and, and I've got a couple of the couple of the administrators who and peaceful parenting mentors who I work really closely with, who've got teenagers, and this is their experience as well. And it's not that, it's not that the kids don't go through all of those stages of development, but the if there isn't a big power struggle between the parent and the child, then the kid doesn't have to fight back. Because, you know, we all know that those stages of the development and developing their autonomy at two and three, whatever extent they didn't succeed there, they're going to have another damn good go at 12, 1314, and and they all go through big changes around that 13 age especially. And I, you know, one day I, when I have more time, I am going to write a book especially for that transition, because it's so thank you. So important. It's so huge. And so often things come really unstuck there and there. Relationship really suffers, because they do experience intense hormonal changes. And I say to moms, you know, think about PMT or you call a PMS there and multiply by 1000 that's what they go through. But so they will go through their stages of developing autonomy and developing their individuality, but when there isn't huge power struggles between the parents, it doesn't have to become a battleground. Certainly, with my 21 year old, it never did. Yeah, I'm a battleground. My girl is nearly 16, and I just can't imagine it. You know, she she does, she does. She's into a lot of similar things. The high I am, you know, we do yoga classes together, and she's really into her vegetarian and vegan cooking, and we do raw food cleansers and water fast and things like that. You know, they're both really, really into looking after themselves. And I just told her today that I've booked her, booked us all in as a family to a weekend of yoga Festival, which is, like, yoga medicine, great. And she's like, Oh my gosh. She was like, over, you know, over the moon with excitement. So, you know that they, they didn't rebel. And I was always told when they were young, because I was such a people saw me to be such a food Nazi, you know, the high, you know, I'm not a big fan of processed food and sugar and all of that. And in fact, I'm equally as passionate about foods as I am about peaceful parenting. So my kids have grown up with a ridiculously healthy diet and and I've been way more strict. I could use that word. But of course, it's not in the authoritarian way, and that the foods in this and like you just unlikely to find the junk. You know, if you do, it's like, it's chocolate raw food cake made with, you know, berries and cacao and that sort of thing. So I was always told they are going to rebel, and they're going to eat McDonald's and fast foods and all of that. And I just, I just couldn't imagine that, you know, and, and, and it's and it's because I just didn't do it in the way of um, being strict, in the way of shaming them. I always let them know it's your choice. If you wanted to eat meat, of course you could eat meat. That's your choice. But I've always educated them, so they're very, very educated. So that's the approach that I have tended to take is a lot of education around why we make the choices we do. And so then as they get older, then there's more and more. Oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you for protecting me from all those chemicals and, you know, all the nasty stuff. So it doesn't I can't wait. I can't

Casey O'Roarty 47:42
wait for the thank you, because I have not heard Thank you. It's okay well, and I think that what I'm hearing you say is we shouldn't like be in fighter stance, simply because we have teenagers, and they are going to navigate the world, and they are the ones that are ultimately in charge of their choices and better than you know, laying down any you know, quote laws or throwing down the hammer is really being in relationship and being supportive of them and meeting them where they're at in a way that allows them to have a more critical view of what they're doing versus I'm going to do this because you don't want me to Yeah exactly, and because you are telling me I can't Yeah. So I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that. And for me, like some of the things that have shown up in the last few months have actually brought like, sometimes it's, this is the way I describe it. It's like things happen and my teenager pulls away, and the teen angst shows up, and there's like, it's like she's brick by brick building a wall. And then something comes. Something happens, whether it's, Oh, Mom, I have to tell you something that I did, or I find out about something, something is a catalyst, and it's like the wall cracks, and it gives her an opportunity to step through it and come back to me, and it's a really interesting and we'll see if it continues to play out this way. I don't know if it's a hormonal thing. I'm not really sure about the why it happens, but I just noticed, like sometimes these, you know, challenging moments are actually creating this space for her to step back into relationship with me. And it's really in those moments we are closer than we were before. Oh, nice, yeah, yeah. And it just really has been teaching me so much about trust and about surrender, and about allowing her the space she needs to make the decisions and to learn from them, right, and to learn from them. So, oh my gosh, I could talk to you for three more hours. You have got to come back on a million things. Just

Genevieve Simperingham 50:00
yeah, it's such a huge topic. It's always so beautiful, isn't it? Casey when you come back to that beautiful heart connection, when the walls come down, when the heart softens again, and it's such a relief to come out of that highly defended state, isn't it? It's like when we're in it, we can feel our muscles are tight and tense and our heart is hard, and it's always such a relief when we come back to that softness of heart. It's beautiful and and they don't know, they don't know how to do that. They don't know how to get back to that connection, that softness of heart, necessarily. But the more we can do it for them, then the more I guess they get better at doing it themselves. And you know, my kids say they often have been quicker than me to do that softening and that reconnecting and saying something like, Mommy, you just seem really stressed. And then I'll just kind of break down and go, Oh, you're right, you know. And then I realized I've just been my tone of voice is just horrible, and I'm all tight and, yeah, you know. And but, and so sometimes, you know, they often have been the ones to like, that's a connecting moment, you know, that's a softening. And they, they've learned to do that from me doing it to them when they're being gnarly and growly and tense and defensive, and I respond with, Oh, sweetheart. You just seem so stressed. Hey, so stressed. Everything's really hard. Isn't that the moment and just connecting back in and yeah, yeah. And that comes back, doesn't it to the self work as well? Isn't it? Because we lose the connection with ourselves sometimes, and then we can't really connect with other people. But when we have a good meditation or that beautiful walk in nature or something that softens us, then we think about her child and her mind and go, actually, I've been a bit critical, haven't I? You come back and you all sweetie, lovey dovey, and you know, hey, I make you your favorite thing.

Casey O'Roarty 52:08
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. And so Genevieve, I always finish my conversations with the same question for my guests. So I have this question for you, which is, in the context of peaceful parenting, are teenagers? What does joyful courage mean to you?

Genevieve Simperingham 52:31
Joyful courage mean to me? So joyful courage actually, it connects me with that last bit that we were just talking about. To me, it's about joy we feel in the heart, don't we? Most of us, most of us, and it takes a lot of courage to reconnect. So to me, it's about the opening the heart and allowing the joy, the enjoyment of the relationship, of the connection, to to come back in. And that takes courage. It takes courage to be vulnerable again. It's easier to be hard and defensive and stern, and it takes courage to open the heart and come back into the the joy of that beautiful connection again.

Casey O'Roarty 53:23
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 53:24
Will you please

Casey O'Roarty 53:25
remind the listeners where they can find you and follow your work? Yeah?

Genevieve Simperingham 53:29
So, yeah, my Facebook page is the way of the peaceful parent, but my website is peacefulparent.com. So peaceful parent, singular, not an S at the end. So that's my website, and there's lots of good stuff there. There's lots of good articles, and, you know, membership and E courses and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, do come and connect and say hi, yay.

Casey O'Roarty 53:55
Thank you so much for coming on and spending time with me. Oh,

Genevieve Simperingham 53:59
yeah, you too. It's been great. Thank you, Casey,

Casey O'Roarty 54:05
wasn't that so great? Glad that you had a chance to listen. Thank you for all the ways that you support the joyful courage podcast. If you want to dig deeper into what this work is all about, get your hands on my new book, joyful courage, calming the drama and taking control of your parenting journey. You can buy it through my website or straight from Amazon. It is getting loads of really positive reviews, so go and check it out if you haven't already, and if you have Why not buy a copy for your friends or your family members, your sisters, your brother in laws. Everybody needs to be reading this book as a transition to what's next in your day, I invite you to find your breath, release any tension that you find in your body, lift up to the balcony seat for some perspective, and have a beautiful, beautiful week. Much, much love.

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